


At the End of Your Life, You're Lucky if You Die

by waketosleep



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Afterlife, Dead Like Me AU, Fic(k) Fest, Grim Reapers, M/M, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, denial is not only in egypt, metaphysical questions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-11
Updated: 2012-07-11
Packaged: 2017-11-09 15:21:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/456984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waketosleep/pseuds/waketosleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nate is dead but that's not the end of it. His life didn't flash before his eyes, either, but it does seem to be repeating itself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At the End of Your Life, You're Lucky if You Die

**Author's Note:**

> While failing to write other fics I've been attempting to work on, I wrote this for a prompt on generation_kill's Fic(k) Fest: 'Dead Like Me AU: Post-OIF, Nate becomes a grim reaper. And then he runs into Brad, who is very much alive--the only problem is that Nate's there to do his job.' I love DLM and I couldn't shake the idea. At least I kept it under 20k. It is probably not a good sign that 'at least I kept it under 20k' is my fic-writing mantra.

The semi hit the lightpost hit the car hit the barrier, and then Nate was standing on the shoulder of the freeway (he had no idea how he'd gotten there), looking at what was left of a Prius with a really familiar license plate.

"Damn," said the girl standing next to him. "That was impressive. I kind of wish I'd recorded that for Youtube."

Nate looked down at her; she was staring in rapt fascination at the car accident. He took a moment to place her but she'd been the person who'd bumped into him half an hour ago, in the parking lot of his office building. He stared at her hair. It was a really nondescript brown but where the sunlight caught it, the shine reminded him of honey. She was wearing an off-the-rack women's suit and reminded him of some of the interns. She glanced up at him and met his gaze.

"Seriously, I give that death a five-point-nine."

Nate shot a look at the wreck of the car; there was the faint sound of approaching sirens. "Somebody died in there?" he demanded. "Jesus Christ, why are we just standing here?" He started to move forward but her hand caught his arm.

"Whoa, buddy. A little shaky on the dismount, maybe. You're too late to save the day," she said. Her voice softened from sarcasm to gentleness. "Come on," she said, giving his elbow a tug. "Let's walk. This place is going to get crowded in a minute."

Nate blinked at her but went along in a daze, casting glances back at the wrecked car. The lightpost had gone right through the windshield on the driver's side and smashed that whole section of the roof down to the level of the hood. She was probably right. No one could have survived that. Nate blinked rapidly and then turned to watch where his feet were going. There were diamond glitters of broken glass on the pavement.

"You strike me as a smart guy, N. Fick," said the girl, leading the way down the shoulder of the highway, past the press of traffic that was backed up behind the accident. The sirens had stopped moving in the traffic jam, but people seemed to be getting out of their cars to go look at the scene. No one appeared to notice Nate or the girl walking along the shoulder. "You're putting two and two together, right? You were driving along, in your ridiculous hybrid car--"

Nate stopped abruptly. She turned around and looked up at him, waiting. He frowned, trying to remember. "It's a blank," he said.

"Yeah," she said. "There's a moment where you just kind of, I don't know, blank out. Probably for the best in a car wreck. Mine was a toilet seat at terminal velocity. You know, you remember Mir? A cosmonaut toilet seat. That kinda thing sticks with you."

"Your what was a toilet seat?"

"My death," she said, matter-of-factly.

Nate looked over his shoulder one more time, back at what was left of his car. "That was me?" he asked, the words coming unbidden. "I'm dead?"

Her face was composed. She was waiting for him to join her on the same page. "Yes, you are."

"It didn't hurt," he said, feeling absent from the conversation. "I'd have expected it to hurt."

"I do my job," she said, "and it doesn't hurt."

"You're, what, a grim reaper?"

She tilted her head. "Probably grimmer than I'm supposed to be, but fuck it. Look, you should be getting your lights in a minute. Just hang on."

"My lights?" said Nate. "What then?"

"Nobody knows," she said. Then something caught her eye, behind Nate, and she did a double-take. He turned around and saw a bright glow.

"Holy shit," she said, breathless. "Those aren't your lights."

"They're not?" Nate squinted. They were probably the lights she was talking about, anyway. He could just make out some kind of house, outlined in the blue glow. There were people in front of it, waving, but he didn't recognize them.

"They're mine," she said. Nate looked at his reaper, who was staring fixedly at the scene in front of her. He'd never heard anyone sound that happy in his life.

"What do you mean, they're yours?" he asked. "What's going on?"

She straightened and looked back at him, giving him a once-over. "I get to retire," she said. "You're up. Hey, what's the N stand for?"

"Nate," he said.

"That is way better than your last name, Nate. Oh yeah, I'm George." She reached into her pocket and tossed him a set of keys. "My car's parked on the side of the road on the southbound side," she said. "Enjoy it."

Nate barely caught the keys. "You're giving me your car?"

"I don't need it anymore," said George with a shrug. "And yours is a write-off. Hey, enjoy your funeral. Check out the food, maybe. I always liked funeral food."

"What happens next?" Nate asked, stopping her from walking toward the lights.

George gave him a brilliant smile. "You're a grim reaper. Someone will catch up with you pretty soon, show you the ropes. Don't fuck anything up!"

Those were her last words before she walked into the light and left Nate standing alone at the side of the freeway, a few hundred yards from his own corpse. He looked down at the keys in his hand, and then made his way over to the barrier for the southbound side.

George's car was a Sunfire. Goddammit.

***

Nate's undead experience started with his new grim reaper boss, whose name was Jeff, telling him that he couldn't keep his name and he couldn't go back to his old life in DC, which really pissed him off because he'd been prepping for an important conference. Instead he attended his own funeral, which had some really good crab cakes and a confusingly large attendance: his entire family, friends from college, coworkers from DC, some guys from the Corps including guys he'd commanded in Iraq, ones who weren't currently overseas. Ray Person cornered him by the mini cheesecakes.

"How'd you know Nate?" he asked through a mouthful of food. From what Jeff had said already, people who'd known Nate in life couldn't recognize him.

Nate thought fast. "College," he said, nodding slightly.

"I can't believe how many Ivy League dicksucks he was friends with," scoffed Person, which warmed Nate's heart a little, in a strange way. "Still, he was a good fucking guy." Person looked around. "I hope when I die, I get a turnout like this."

"No kidding," said Nate belatedly, not sure how else to react. When Ray leaned around his shoulder with a mouthful of cheesecake and called, "Hey, Reporter!" at a person who turned out to be Evan Wright, Nate decided abruptly that he needed to get out of there.

Nate's department in the grim reaper business was External Influences. He'd come into it the usual way, via mode of death, but apparently there were some opportunities for transfer with experience, which he thought was surreal. Opportunities for career growth in the soul-taking industry. Well, there was a steady influx of clients. He spent the next six months in the DC area, ferrying shooting victims and car accident fatalities and the occasional suicide to their lights and squatting with his coworker Lettie (died in 1931 in a knife fight) in a foreclosed condo in Maryland. He kind of hated living like an undocumented homeless person but nonetheless he thought he was starting to get the hang of his new lifestyle, when one morning Jeff met him alone at the IHOP they always convened at and said, "Look, Nate, we've really enjoyed working with you here. I mean, we all miss Toilet Seat and her bullshit, but you've just slotted right into the team."

Nate looked down at his white coffee mug and wondered how a person could actually get laid off from a job in HR for the recently deceased. He also wondered a little why he was fighting back a frown at the idea.

But he didn't get laid off. They knew, of course, about his military service, and there was a sudden need for personnel (as Jeff put it) in the Middle East, and Jeff shoved a new identity across the table at Nate and asked him if he missed the Marines at all. Apparently, the Marines missed him. Or, they missed Sergeant David Parks, and needed his service with all due haste. Nate squinted at the photo on his documents, which didn't look like him.

"I was commissioned, before," he said after a moment.

"Look, there's a lot of red tape involved here," said Jeff. "We could only falsify so much history, and college and officer school or whatever was too much. You like being challenged, right?"

Nate's eggs arrived right at that moment. He smiled wanly up at the server, twitching the papers out of sight.

***

Nate hooked up with his platoon at Lejeune, but for transport there, he was introduced to a forty-something guy who wore civilian clothes with a regulation haircut. "You the DC transfer?" the guy asked, sticking out a hand.

Nate eyed him.

"External Influences?" the guy prompted.

"Oh. Yes." Nate shook the proffered hand, which was attached to Steve, who claimed to be a liaison. "We have those?" Nate asked.

"This stuff gets too tricky sometimes. It helps to have a bureaucratic connection. We're very highly classified, Nate; nobody you'll interact with except your supervisor will know what you're there for. Come on, let's go, I have a car," said Steve.

It was a six hour drive. In that period, Nate was lectured four times on the consequences of using his knowledge of estimated times of death of personnel to attempt to change troop movements. Apparently, not only did it never work correctly anyway, but it had also triggered some colossal fuckups and unaccounted-for losses of life whenever anyone had tried it. The cleanup from these incidents, said Steve, was horrifying.

"Seriously, Fick, you fucking try it once and I will have you relocated so fast your head will spin. Your life will become the shit detail. You'll be reaping kiddie cancer patients until you hit your quota, am I clear?"

"Crystal," said Nate, looking out the window. "I won't fuck anything up."

"I'm holding you to that," said Steve.

***

Afghanistan looked a lot like Nate had left it, what, a decade prior. He passed two years there as Sergeant David Parks, getting shot at, administering humanitarian aid and reaping Marines who died in combat. It wasn't an easy life, but he wasn't squatting in DC anymore either (he was getting _paid_ for work again) and like fucking Jeff had promised him in that IHOP, he was being challenged. More than once he'd had to remind himself of the rules of engagement, when his supervisor handed him down a long list of names of his men who weren't going to make it out of the next firefight or when someone he really liked was going to get hit. Mostly, though, Nate thought he'd successfully achieved a state where he could reconcile his job in the Corps--providing support to the men in his unit, acting as the go-between for the enlisted men and the COs--with his job as a reaper, providing a final kind of support to those guys who he wouldn't be able to protect in life any longer.

Nate tried extra hard to remember this when he found himself in positions like he was now, with a list of ten names coming down the line the same morning they were supposed to go provide aid in a town in the mountains; when he had to move among his men, checking they had the right supplies and ammunition and giving reassuring knocks on the kevlar and claps on the shoulder that might, sometimes, come away with the faint glitter of a soul shimmering through his fingers. Souls dazzled in the desert sun; Nate stared at them now and then, watching them catch the light before they drifted off to safety, away from their mortal bodies.

This round of deaths was going to decimate his unit. Nate didn't know what was going to happen in the aftermath, but when it came to the event itself (IED under an old BMW parked in the street, some going instantly and some slower but none, thankfully, caught inside their bodies at the moment of death because Nate had been there to make sure it wouldn't happen), it was all the same shit. When the smoke and dust cleared and the comms lit up in the scramble to figure out what had happened, Nate stood before ten Marines from his unit and did what he always did: he thanked them for their service, and sent them to their lights. Everyone's lights looked different, and Nate didn't always know what they were seeing but it always made them happy, and that felt like enough. He'd taken those guys as far as he could, after all, and there were living men yet to tend to.

Some days, ambivalence was the best feeling Nate could muster about his work.

Between the deaths and the shrapnel injuries in the unit that needed CASEVACs, they indeed wound up with only a handful of combat-effective men remaining. The mission was scrapped and Nate shortly found himself back at Bagram, attached to another unit that was about to be sent to Nimruz province. Nate met his new CO, Captain Ahlstrom, outside the enlisted mess.

"Pleasure to meet you, Sergeant," said Ahlstrom. "I've heard good things about you."

"Glad to hear it, sir," said Nate.

"We're shipping out in the next thirty hours," said Ahlstrom. "Conveying a Recon unit to the AO."

"Recon?" echoed Nate.

"You worked with them much before?" Ahlstrom asked. "They're a bunch of cocky fucks." He grinned.

"I'm sure it'll be an experience, sir," said Nate.

Nate had barely met the enlisted Marines he'd be herding, hadn't encountered any of the Recon people who were supposedly rolling out with them, when he got his list of names from his supervisor. It wasn't going to be a good trip, apparently; the ETDs were all clustered approximately forty hours away. Two of the three names he recognized from the men he'd just met, but the other one he didn't. He was probably a Recon Marine; Nate was inordinately glad he didn't know the name already.

It looked like he might actually get some rack time for a change until they were underway, and Nate was fully prepared to take advantage of a few hours of half-decent sleep while he could get it. On the way back from the latrines in the dark, though, he crossed paths with a very tall man, whose uniform when it caught the light from Nate's flashlight had three chevrons and two rockers on the sleeve. The man turned more to face him properly and the first thing Nate saw in the dark was the name tape on his uniform, which said 'COLBERT'. Then the light revealed Brad's face.

"Sergeant Parks?" said Brad.

And, right: the living couldn't recognize Nate now that he was undead. "Gunny Colbert," Nate returned.

"Nice to put a face to the name," said Brad. "The scuttlebutt says you're good at cat-herding."

"Does it?" said Nate, bemused.

"Enlisted and commissioned cats alike," agreed Brad. "The CO Whisperer."

Nate choked on a laugh. "Fuck's sake."

Brad grinned a grin that Nate hadn't seen in years. "I'm with First Reconnaissance," he said. "My team's going with yours to the AO."

"I know who you are."

Brad blinked.

"Your reputation precedes you, too, Gunny," said Nate.

"Outside the reconnaissance community?" Brad sounded skeptical.

Shit. "Well, I've heard of your exploits." It was a bad recovery but Nate was going to roll with it.

"Exploits, I like that." Brad shifted in place. "Well, I'm probably keeping you from shut-eye," he said with a nod. "See you tomorrow, Sergeant."

Nate walked back to his tent in a daze.

***

Nate found the Recon guy he needed the next morning and did his reaps before they all got underway, by helicopter. In between tracking down his reaps, he kept getting distracted by the sight of Brad in the sunlight. He wore the decade since Nate had seen him on his face, in fine lines around his eyes from too much sun or too much worry, or both, most likely. But he walked the same and talked the same and grinned the same and bitched people out the same (except that he'd apparently become fluent in the saltier parts of Pashto). Eventually, Nate remembered that staring was creepy and went to find Captain Ahlstrom, just in case there were last-minute orders. Nate was probably still too early for the last-minute orders but fuck it, he was going anyway.

The trip to the AO was smooth, but Nate glanced at his watch as their helicopter was landing and saw that it was almost time for things to go south. It was going to be immediate, he realized, his stomach dropping, and he brass-checked his weapon. Sure enough, their boots collectively hit dirt at the POG camp and about fifteen minutes later, it was attacked by insurgents. Nate's two men died in an RPG hit and the Recon Marine was taken out by a sniper while trying to find the enemy spotters. It was all fast; the three souls had to wait for the fight to finish before they could go to their lights and the Recon guy, whose name was Lopez and who was a hard motherfucker even in death, finally helped Nate get one of the spotters. It was like a nice little revenge, and the ghost of Lopez smiled approvingly before going to his lights.

Nate saw Brad three hours later, poring over maps. He couldn't help it, he wandered over to the hood of the vehicle Brad had commandeered.

"I heard you lost a guy," said Nate, nodding condolences.

Brad glanced up briefly from his map, his finger marking his place. "You lost two," he shrugged.

"I was sorry I didn't get to know them a little more. There just wasn't time. They seemed like good guys." It was a shame. It always was.

"Lopez was barely out of BRC," said Brad after a moment. "But he had potential."

"I could tell," said Nate, tracing the twisting lines of a river across the map in front of him with his gaze.

When the long silence finally made him glance up, Brad was watching him. "Sorry, Gunny, did I cross a line?"

Brad shook his head. "You kind of remind me of somebody I knew once."

Nate felt a pulse of ache somewhere in his guts at that, like his heart had skipped a few beats. "You don't know them anymore?"

Brad looked back down at the map. "He died a few years back."

Goddammit. "A Marine?" It was like picking a scab off; he shouldn't be doing it but he couldn't stop himself.

"Recon. An officer, but a good one, back in the day. He went turncoat for the Democrats after he left the Corps but he still died way too young."

"Sorry to hear that," said Nate.

"So was I," said Brad, and there didn't seem to be much more to say about it.

***

Nate should have walked the fuck away at that point, he knew it, but he didn't, and for the next five days they were at the POG camp he and Brad developed some kind of sick routine of hanging out. Well, it probably wasn't sick to Brad, but Brad didn't know any better.

"Dave," said Brad, who liked first-name terms when it was outside his chain of command, "have you ever given any thought to joining Recon? We need more decent NCOs."

Brad's team was fresh off some hush-hush night operation and apparently had one more thing to do before RTB. Nate was posted at the POG camp for another few weeks.

"You think I'm Recon material?" Nate fought back a grin.

"They're not all still in diapers. Just most of them."

"I don't know," said Nate.

"My recommendation carries some weight, if you wanted to."

"Big swinging dick, are you, Gunny?"

"You did say that my exploits were the stuff of legend," grinned Brad. He was completely full of shit and Nate had missed this, so, so much. God, he was fucked.

"I'll think about it," Nate stalled. Of course, he couldn't. But he could pretend.

***

It was two days later that Brad's Recon team got ready to carry out the second part of their mission in Nimruz province. Nate had been catching up on his AARs and watching the Recon Marines run around the base all evening, getting their supplies together; apparently they were heading out under cover of dark again. Nate imagined they'd be back to Bagram as soon as they wrapped up, catching a ride with the supplies transport that was leaving at 0700. That would mean no more Brad in his life again. Nate told himself that this was for the best, that he'd been lucky enough to get a second chance to spend time with someone he'd once felt close to in his old life. It was frowned upon, as it was. He fervently hoped that Brad would leave well enough alone and not mention his name to anyone for Recon, although frankly BRC might be easier the second time through.

It was almost full dark, and Nate was just thinking about going to join the nightly NCO poker game when he got a communiqué from his supervisor. Not Captain Ahlstrom; the mysterious supervisor in External Influences. Nate froze at the name: B. Colbert. The ETD was fucking three hours away. Nate started swearing a blue streak under his breath, clipping on his kevlar and tossing his paperwork onto his rack. Normally he got a day's notice. Worst case, maybe twelve hours. It was pretty necessary in a war zone; a reaper in the military didn't have the scheduling flexibility they had in a civilian locale. He had no idea what the fuck was up with this shit. Three hours. He was furious as he jogged out of his tent into the night. Humvee headlights illuminated the camp in patches; he could hear voices to the south and ran that way. He had to catch Brad before his team was oscar mike, or he wouldn't be able to get to him in time. He'd have to find Brad in the dark, heading out of camp into hostile territory without orders to do so, and frankly he had no idea where they were going. The thought of missing a reap turned Nate's stomach. He'd heard things about what happened to the unreaped souls. Just the idea of being stuck inside your corpse was horrifying enough.

Nate tried to tell himself, as he tracked the voices and strained his ears for Brad's, that he wasn't upset because it was Brad. He was upset because of the needless complication. Everybody died. Marines sometimes did it ahead of schedule. Nate was a pretty good grim reaper, if he did say so himself, and he didn't let his personal feelings cloud his judgment. Not at all.

He repeated that like a mantra when he reached the south edge of camp and saw Brad looming above most of the other Recon Marines. His heart was in his throat. In three hours, Brad would be dead.

Fuck.

Nate slowed down when he was close enough for his footsteps to be heard, settling into a leisurely kind of perimeter stroll, or something. He couldn't just barrel over to Brad and lay hands on him in the middle of his men; this was going to take finesse. Nate spent a few seconds pondering strategy and then finally just doubled over slightly, coughing into his fist. Three of Brad's men predictably glanced at the source of the noise, clocked that one sergeant Brad talked to, and looked away. Brad looked up, too, and did Nate's heavy lifting for him by clapping one of his guys on the shoulder and then wandering over.

"Need help looking for your lung on the ground?" he asked lightly.

Nate cleared his throat. "Nope. Still in there. Just some dust, I guess."

"I don't know why the fuck people with dust allergies come to Afghanistan," said Brad. "I'm pretty sure the recruiters don't lie about there being sand here."

"It's tough to beat around the bush with that kind of detail," said Nate. He glanced around Brad's shoulder. "You going somewhere?"

"Loose ends," said Brad without turning to look. "Nothing strenuous."

Famous last words, Nate thought, and put his right hand out. "Good hunting, Gunny Colbert."

Brad shook his hand; the gold shimmer of his soul stretched between their fingers as they let go, sparkling in the dark, but Nate was the only one who could see it. Brad hesitated, though, and glanced down at his own hand quickly before letting it fall back to his side.

Sometimes people noticed. Nate got the impression that it was like a tickle. Bugs under the skin, something. He hadn't felt anything when he'd been reaped, though. Maybe George had just been a professional at feeling up the nearly-dead.

"See you around, Sergeant Parks," said Brad with a smirk, and went back to his men.

"Yeah," said Nate, half to himself.

***

The next three hours were agonizing. Nate skipped the poker game rather than let himself be taken advantage of by POGs who sensed weakness, and went back to his rack to stare up at the tent canvas. He'd always had a good time-sense, and he knew without having to look at his watch when his wait was nearly over; he got up slowly, with fifteen minutes to go, and wandered out into the night. It was black as anything, in his part of the camp, but if he walked around the side of his tent he'd be able to see the faint glow of light where troops were gathered, enjoying downtime. Nate looked up, and it was mostly overcast but he could pick out a few points of starlight in the gaps, see the faint white smudge of moonlight through some of the clouds.

Brad's voice came from behind him. "Where the fuck am I?"

Nate kept his gaze on one bright star he could see. Maybe it was a planet; planets didn't flicker when you looked at them, he was pretty sure. "The POG camp," he answered.

"I was on a goddamn mission, what the fuck happened?" Brad sounded worked-up.

"What's the last thing you remember?" Nate asked.

"That retard Daniels got made by the target and we got caught up. Guzman spotted the RPG tube and... I don't know. Who the fuck are you and why am I here instead of with my team?"

Nate turned around to face Brad, who looked as pissed as he sounded, and took a deep breath. "I don't know how to tell you this, but--"

"Nate?"

Nate's speech died on his tongue. They stared at each other in the dark. Apparently the reaper appearance voodoo really and specifically only did work on the living.

"Jesus fuck, am I dead?" Brad said faintly.

"Oh, shit," Nate said without thinking.

"Is this a fucking dream, or what?" Brad demanded, striding closer. He looked down at Nate's uniform, saw all of Sergeant Dave Parks' insignia, and blinked. "Am I dying on a hillside and hallucinating you back from the dead in Parks' uniform?"

"It's a cover," said Nate miserably. "You're not dreaming. Oh my god, I can't hope to explain this."

"You fucking--" Brad's voice broke a little. "You died a couple years ago. I remember you died. It was a car crash. You were on the news. Why would you be here?"

Nate looked over Brad's shoulder at his empty tent and made a decision. "If I'm going to explain this, I need to sit down," he said, leading the way.

"You always did have good ideas," said Brad, following.

"You can't sit down," Nate couldn't resist saying. "You're incorporeal."

"It must really be you, using an SAT word like that." Brad's arm passed right through the tent flap on the way in, but he apparently didn't notice because he tried to sit on the end of Nate's rack and landed on the floor.

"What the fuck did I just say, Brad?" Nate asked, giving him a hand up to his feet.

Brad stared at the cot, kicked at it lazily, and watched his boot go right through the frame. "How come you can touch me? Normally my dreams have better logic than this."

Nate doubted that. "I'm not really alive, either. I died in that car accident just like you heard. Now I'm undead. Different rules apply to me than to other people, or bed frames."

"Are you the only one who can see me?"

Nate nodded.

"And you don't look like you except to me, right now?"

Nate parsed that carefully before nodding again. "Dave Parks is me. It's the identity I've been using. You were talking to me all along."

Brad opened his mouth to say something, apparently changed his mind, and then finally said something else. "So you...." He trailed off, looking awkward.

"I reap the souls of those about to die and then ferry them to the afterlife, or whatever."

"Fuck, there's really an afterlife?"

"I guess? There's something. Or there seems to be. I don't have the answers, I've never seen it."

"So you're not doing the usual thing. You had to forego the Great Beyond to babysit. Did you volunteer for this, sir?"

"I was drafted," said Nate. "And don't call me sir. You outrank me, Gunnery Sergeant."

Brad's grin was electric. "Spending your afterlife as a grunt. I think you wear a cosmic 'kick me' sign, sir."

"I do not," said Nate, suspecting it might be true.

"So how long do you have to do this shit? Not forever?"

"I have a quota to fill. Then I can move on."

"What's your quota?"

"I don't know."

"Motherfucker. You really do get all the shit jobs. Even in death, you're a slave to bureaucratic morons in charge."

"Thanks, Brad. Thanks a lot," said Nate with all the sarcasm he could muster. He heaved himself up from his rack, putting himself nose-to-chin with the spiritual remnant of Brad Colbert (still an asshole, eternally speaking).

Brad sobered suddenly. "I missed your funeral."

"I know," said Nate. "I was there. I mean, outside the casket," he amended. "There were a few of the guys there who weren't deployed, it's fine. I understand."

"I wasn't deployed, either," said Brad.

Nate looked at him.

"I was in Oceanside. I got the notice, I thought about going, but I didn't." He cleared his throat, which was interesting since technically speaking, Brad no longer had a throat to clear. "I couldn't."

"Person was there," was all Nate could think to say. "He talked to me."

Brad snorted lightly. "He gave me shit for pussying out, after. If that helps."

"Brad, I don't give a fuck that you didn't come to my funeral," snapped Nate.

"I've been regretting it ever since, all right?" Brad snapped back. "I didn't say goodbye properly. There was too much shit all wrapped up in it. We hadn't talked in almost ten years. It was a lot of things, all together. But I didn't have the sack to go and I regret it."

Nate turned that over in his head, examined it from a few different angles. "Well, you've got a second chance," he said quietly.

Brad's hand felt cool on Nate's cheek. Not like a dead hand but like a breeze, and for a second Nate wasn't in the desert anymore, where it was always too hot or too cold. "I don't want to do it," said Brad. His gaze was flicking over Nate's face like he was trying to memorize the features. "I'm still bitching out of this."

"Take your time," said Nate, surprised to hear his own voice so steady. "You've got a few minutes." There was a blue glow behind Brad, obscuring the tent entrance, but it would keep.

"What happens next?" said Brad. "For me."

Nate raised an eyebrow. "You walk into the light."

"No, seriously."

"No, seriously," Nate countered, and finally nodded his chin at the lights behind Brad.

The hand dropped from Nate's face, and as Brad looked into his lights Nate could hear the ocean. Smell it a little, maybe. He couldn't help a tiny smile. Predictable.

"What happens when I go through there?" Brad asked after a minute.

"Nobody knows."

"What happens if you go, too?"

Nate sputtered. "I can't go, they're not my lights."

Brad looked back at him. "Is that a law of physics, or metaphysics, whatever? Or are those just the rules?"

"Does it fucking matter?"

"Yes."

Nate was flailing inside, but he mostly managed to keep it contained. "I have a job to do here, Brad!"

"There's no fucking way you're the only one doing this, Nate, this isn't some Santa Claus bullshit."

This was probably why Nate had always avoided playing chess with Brad. Or poker, for that matter. "You want me to pass the buck to some other reaper and just hitch a ride on your lights?"

"Yes," said Brad, "I do. If you do. I mean, it sounds to me like your little organization gets all its shit done via buck-passing--I'm sure it's comfortingly familiar for you, sir--so they'll probably recover admirably in your absence. How long would you have to keep doing this otherwise?"

Nate thought about his old roommate Lettie, who'd been reaping since 1931 and was still working. He looked at Brad, and he looked at Brad's lights. He could hear a seabird. He was positive it was California. He wondered if it would still be California on the other side, if Brad would be there, too.

"You might be stuck with me for eternity," said Nate. "It's a possibility."

"My fingers are crossed. Speaking of second chances." Brad held out a hand, waggling his fingers a little.

"You're too fucking smug to be a knight in shining armour, rescuing me from my unlife," said Nate.

"They never let me slay a dragon, anyway," said Brad, his eyes dancing. "Maybe there's some over there. Only one way to find out, sir."

Nate blew out a breath, looking down at Brad's extended hand. His fingers fumbled with the buckle of his kevlar but then he got it off, tossing it on the rack behind him. He hadn't even finished his paperwork. Oh well.

Nate took Brad's hand, and together they walked toward the lights.

 

THE END


End file.
